Technology news

GUEST: When you’re a startup founder, you get a lot of questions. What’s your traction? Are you technical? When do you expect to implode and go back to working at a bank? Most of them are easy to answer. But there’s one that I get pushback on. It usually goes like this:
“ Alex, how many customers do you have?”
“We have a few hundred, but most aren‘t paying yet at this point.”
“Those aren’t customers, Alex. Those are users.”

The US Customs and Border Protection wants to begin asking Chinese visitors to voluntarily disclose their social media handles when they enter the country. The agency has entered a proposal earlier this week to be published in the Federal Register detailing some changes to the electronic visa system used to vet visitors.The proposal calls for the Department of Homeland Security to add an additional question to the existing Electronic Visa Update System (EVUS): “Please enter information ass

The internet can't get enough of President Donald Trump's "last night in Sweden" remarks, including, of course, J.K. Rowling.
Never one to shy from a little fun at the expense of the U.S. president, the author joined in on Twitter's response to Trump's confusing reference to a terrorist attack that didn't actually happen.
SEE ALSO: Internet turns to @Sweden on Twitter after Trump appears to invent terror attackLiterally the biggest incident of Sweden last night was a horse called Biscuit being r

Daniel Radcliffe is perfectly comfortable with the fact that he resembles bespectacled women of the past. 
During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, he joked with Norton about his past-life doppelgängers, and the one trait they all share. 
"These are all my past lives— I was, like, a slightly depressed lady." 
[H/T: Vulture]Relive SpaceX's incredible daytime rocket landing with this video
Get your tissues 'cos Steve Irwin's son is basically a mini-Steve on 'Tonig

At a rally full of scientists, things were bound to get a bit geeky.
On Sunday, thousands scientists and supporters gathered in Boston's Copley Square to "stand up for science" under the Trump administration. 
Their signs were, predictably, quite clever. My favorite sign so far#standupforscience pic.twitter.com/2pSlU5UPdz
— Tomas Green (@TomasWGreen) February 19, 2017
I can't tell you how many older people have come up to me today to say, "I remember polio. Thank you." #standupfo

A year ago, Amazon raised its free two day shipping minimum to $49 for non-Prime members. This weekend, the company decided to drop the price back down to $35.
While Prime users already get free shipping on their orders, non-members now only have to spend $35 at a minimum in order to get free shipping on eligible items. The minimum order for books has remained the same at $25.Amazon appears to be working to compete with traditional retailers looking to muscle their way into the online retail spa

GUEST: Only five years ago, the autonomous vehicle future seemed like a distant vision. This year at CES, the “frenzy” over autonomous vehicles stole the show with dozens of live demos, partnerships, and product announcements. In fact, 13 of the world’s 14 largest automakers have announced plans to bring autonomous vehicles to market, and 12 of the world’s 14 largest technology companies have announced plans to build technologies to support and operate autonomous vehicles

For those of a certain age, the iconic “pew pew pew” noises of the Asteroids arcade game bring a flood memories. The gameplay pales in comparison to the ultra-realistic video games of today, but there’s a quaint charm to flying around in a little space ship blowing up floating rocks.
Asteroids, first released in late 1979, was one of the first really popular video games, but its legacy goes much further than that. In fact, if you use most popular GPS navigation systems, you&rsq

Ransomware is one of the oldest cyberthreats, but it has made a big comeback in the past couple of years because it has become much easier to perpetrate against consumers, businesses, hospitals, and government agencies.
With ransomware, cyber thieves steal a user’s data and threaten to destroy it unless the user pays them a ransom. One study by Infoblox found that ransomware increased 3,500 percent from the fourth quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of 2016. Ransoms paid al

Chris Wallace from Fox News isn't happy Donald Trump called the media an "enemy of the American people," and on Sunday, he let the president's chief of staff know it. 
Talking on Fox News Sunday, the veteran news reporter — himself a former White House correspondent — pushed back against Trump's comments (made on Twitter, of course) to Reince Priebus.
SEE ALSO: Donald Trump just called the media 'the enemy of the American people'
"But you don’t get to tell us what to do, R

Rocket launches are always fun to watch, but witnessing SpaceX (or Blue Origin, for that matter) land a rocket is always an awe-inspiring event. This morning, Elon Musk’s company successfully landed its third rocket on the ground after delivering its payload into space, and there was a drone in the sky to capture the moment.It’s a unique vantage point, and SpaceX has released some neat videos in the past of its landings and attempted landings. You can check out landings in a 360-degr

Earlier this week, my colleague Chaim Gartenberg covered a laptop called the GPD Pocket, which is currently being funded on Indiegogo. As Chaim pointed out, the Pocket’s main advantage is its size — with a 7-inch screen, the thing is really, really small — and its price, a reasonable $399. But he didn’t mention that the Pocket is the resurrection of one of the most compelling, yet fatally flawed, computing trends of the ‘00s: the netbook. So after ten years, are net

Leningrad, a Russian rock band that hails from Saint Petersburg, recently released a new music video for their song “Tattoo Artist”, which plays out a spectacular sequence of events — in reverse.
The video is directed by Ilya Naishuller, and it plays out backwards, opening with a crowd of people running away from a building from something terrible. There’s fire, mascots, and horses, and as we watch, the scene gets even more ridiculous and over the top. It’s like a R

Elon Musk isn't the only person who wants to build a city on Mars. Now the United Arab Emirates has announced that it wants to establish a "mini-city" on the red planet by 2117. 
UAE prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum explained the monarchy's Mars plans in a series of tweets on Feb. 14.
SEE ALSO: Dubai is bringing the world its first rotating skyscraper
"The project, to be named 'Mars 2117,' integrates a vision to create a mini-city and community on Mars involving internat

EPA employees smarting under the social media gag order of President Trump and upset by last week’s appointment of Scott Pruitt as Administrator are going online — in droves — to voice their discontent. Numerous “alternative” Twitter accounts are lighting up in advance of a meeting between Pruitt and staffers scheduled for Tuesday.
Below are excerpts from a multi-part post from @altEPASmrtGrwth, an alternative Twitter account for the EPA’s Smart Grow

Californians this weekend captured harrowing scenes of cars stuck in sinkholes, trucks toppling off a crumbling highway and muddy waters rushing through the streets of Los Angeles. 
The Golden State is grappling with yet another punishing wave of atmospheric river storms, which dump vast amounts of rain in narrow corridors over a short period of time. 
SEE ALSO: Insane drone footage shows massive damage and flooding at California's Oroville Dam
Drought-busting storms slammed Southern C

SpaceX did it again, and this time, with a whole lot of style. 
Elon Musk's private spaceflight company managed to land yet another Falcon 9 first stage back at Cape Canaveral after launching a mission to orbit for NASA.
SEE ALSO: SpaceX sticks daytime rocket landing back on Earth after launch to space
The daytime landing marks the third time the company has landed a rocket back on land and the eighth time overall that it has recovered a rocket stage after launch. pic.twitter.com/6Ve3

When it comes to game design, we’ll find out one of these days if artificial intelligence can beat a human being at creativity. But today, the matter is still up for debate.
Some game designers believe that intuition is the best tool for being creative while others think that data-driven design rules, particularly in an age of digital games — mobile or online — where you can collect so much data about what players want.
What’s the right balance between science and art whe

Leah Reich was one of the first internet advice columnists. Her column "Ask Leah" ran on IGN, where she gave advice to gamers for two and a half years. During the day, Leah is Slack’s user researcher, but her views here do not represent her employer. How to be Human runs every other Sunday. You can write to her at [email protected] and read more How to be Human here.
Leah,
Not sure if this is still a good way to reach you, but I need some help.
Backstory: I'm a 10-year combat veteran wi

President Donald Trump left many people — including former first daughter Chelsea Clinton — confused Saturday night when he suggested that something terrible had happened in Sweden the previous evening.
No tragedy occurred that day in Sweden, which the internet had fun pointing out. On Sunday, Clinton made sure to highlight the Trump administration's penchant for inventing terrorist attacks.What happened in Sweden Friday night? Did they catch the Bowling Green Massacre perpetrators?

GUEST: This report is a bit of a “Switch” since Nintendo is the only console brand to make our top five chart this time around.
GamesBeat has partnered with iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention analytics from 10 million smart TV screens, to bring you a monthly report on how gaming brands are spending their TV ad dollars and which commercials are generating the most digital response (iSpot measures actions across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and all major sea

At the start of this month, the WeRateDogs Twitter account (@dog_rates) released a new mobile game called Good Dogs. It’s cute and easy to play: you’re a dog running leash-free through a park, trying to pick up golden biscuits while sidestepping obstacles like tree trunks and oblivious cyclists. But the game was proof of something else: WeRateDogs has gotten so popular, it’s basically created its own branded universe (complete with Patreon page). It seemed the time had come, in

On Wednesday, a video surfaced of a Nintendo Switch in use, which gave us a good look at the device’s software and how its menus work. Nintendo claims that the device in question had been stolen from a distributor.The maker of the video had claimed that the Switch was a preorder that had shipped early, but walked those statements back. In a statement made to IGN, Nintendo said that the device and others had been stolen by the employee of a US distributor, and the one in the video had been

On Wednesday, a video surfaced of a Nintendo Switch in use, which gave us a good look at the device’s software and how its menus work. Nintendo claims that the device in question had been stolen from a distributor.The maker of the video had claimed that the Switch was a preorder that had shipped early, but walked those statements back. In a statement made to IGN, Nintendo said that the device and others had been stolen by the employee of a US distributor, and the one in the video had been

(Reuters) – A SpaceX Falcon rocket blasted off on Sunday from a historic NASA launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, then succeeded in landing itself back on the ground nine minutes later.
The rocket, which launched at 9:39 a.m. EST, carried a cargo ship with about 5,500 pounds (2,500 kg) of supplies and experiments for the International Space Station.
After the launch, the rocket’s first stage separated, turned around and touched down on a landing pad at the nearby

President Donald Trump has unintentionally turned the internet into one big celebration of Swedish pop culture.
The U.S. president on Saturday alluded to a terrorist-related event in Sweden that, as far as Swedes can tell, didn't actually happen.
SEE ALSO: Internet turns to @Sweden on Twitter after Trump appears to invent terror attack
"We’ve got to keep our country safe," he said Saturday during a campaign-style rally in Melbourne, Florida. Trump was defending his now-suspended travel ban

There may come a time when SpaceX landing a rocket stage back on Earth after flying to space isn't news — when we can simply take these science-fiction looking landings for granted and brush them off as no big deal.
But today is not that day. 
The Elon Musk-founded spaceflight company stuck yet another beautiful landing of the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket after launching an uncrewed Dragon spacecraft toward the International Space Station from a historic launch pad. The Drago

SpaceX pulled off another successful rocket landing this morning — and this time during the day on the coast of Florida. A Falcon 9 rocket successfully touched down at SpaceX’s ground-based landing zone at Cape Canaveral after launching to space. It’s the third time that SpaceX has landed its rocket on solid ground post-launch, but the first time a ground landing has been done during the daytime. The success means that the company now has eight landed Falcon 9s in its possessio

Rogue One recently earned an Oscar nomination for its special effects, and earlier this week, we got a chance to see how Industrial Light and Magic created the effects for the scene Jedha and Scarif. ILM has released a new digital effects breakdown of from the film: the epic space battle from the film’s final act.
The clip takes us through the layers of digital effects as the X-Wing fighters swoop into battle, going from wireframe models to realistic-looking ships. What’s also really

Firefighters disperse protestors and onlookers with fire hoses.Image: Chattanooga History Center/PicnoogaIn February 1960, black activists kicked off a wave of protests against segregation across the South, beginning with sit-ins at a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina.The sit-ins spread to Nashville and then to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where they were organized not by experienced or professional activists, but by the teenage students of Howard High School.Beginning on Feb. 19, Class

Start your Sunday morning off right by watching a SpaceX rocket launch and landing. The company’s Falcon 9 is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida tomorrow, carrying a Dragon cargo capsule filled with nearly 5,500 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station. About 10 minutes after take off, the majority of the rocket will return to the Cape and attempt to land at SpaceX’s ground-based landing site, called Landing Zone 1.
This launch is extra special
It’s Spac

NextVR has made significant progress across different leagues when it comes to VR, from broadcasting NCAA football games and tailgating activities to providing highlight packages for the NFL despite their slower adoption of VR and 360-degree live-streaming. The NBA has been a bit more active in their partnership with NextVR, including VR as part of broadcast subscription packages, and putting together a schedule for the current season. This partnership continues as the t

From the moment you set foot on British soil, your personal data could easily be accessed, or even hacked, by the government. 
New invasive legislation has been dubbed by critics as one of the most extreme surveillance laws ever passed in a democracy. 
SEE ALSO: Keep your texts private in Trump's America (and everywhere else, too)
The Snoopers' Charter — aka the Investigatory Powers Act — was passed into law at the end of last year. It arguably removes your right to online

Um, does the Irwin family have access to some kind of underground cloning technology? Because Robert Irwin, the late Steve Irwin's son, is the spitting image of his dad down to the khaki shorts and endless enthusiasm.
A conservationist and TV personality, Steve died in 2006 after being struck by a stingray barb, but he clearly passed his media chops onto his son. The 13-year-old appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Thursday, and Fallon couldn't get over the similarity. "It's so coo

In a new interview with Quartz, Microsoft founder Bill Gates makes a rather stunning argument—that robots who replace human workers should incur taxes equivalent to that worker’s income taxes.
“Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed . . . If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”
Gates argues that these taxes, paid by a robot’s owners or

Emma Johansson is a school librarian from Borås, Sweden, and on Saturday, she found herself fact-checking the President of the United States.
The cross-border saga started at a rally in Melbourne, Florida that day, where Donald Trump defended his "Muslim immigration ban" before a crowd of thousands. "We've got to keep our country safe," he said.Trump, discussing terror, seamlessly mentions incident "last night in Sweden".There was NO "incident" in Sweden last nightpic.twitter.com/XtcC4PRiN

GUEST: Every year in March the tech world descends upon our humble little hometown here in Austin for SXSW. The conference, and corresponding festival, is undoubtedly one of the tentpole events for the tech industry, one in which agendas are set, trends are initiated, and the “next big thing” gets launched.
The real reason that SXSW is so influential, though, is that it’s not simply tech companies talking to other tech companies, as is the case at many other conferences. SXSW b

(Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is pursuing at least three separate probes relating to alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential elections, according to five current and former government officials with direct knowledge of the situation.
While the fact that the FBI is investigating had been reported previously by the New York Times and other media, these officials shed new light on both the precise number of inquires and their focus.
The FBI’s Pittsburgh f

President Donald Trump may have the nuclear codes, but when it comes to things to be scared about, think biggerAccording to Bill Gates, bioterrorism could be even more deadly.
The Microsoft cofounder warned the world is not paying enough attention to "health security and international security" in some decidedly grim remarks at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, the Guardian reported.
SEE ALSO: The biodegradable paper airplane that could revolutionize humanitarian aid
Gates suggested th

California Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu on Friday asked the House Oversight Committee to launch an investigation into President Donald Trump’s use of an insecure Android smartphone. Trump’s well-documented attachment to the device is, Lieu says, a threat to national security.
“Cybersecurity experts universally agree that an ordinary Android smartphone, which the President is reportedly using despite repeated warnings from the Secret Service, can be easily hacked,” read